A Boston Bro Recounts His Story of Being Trapped with a One-Night Stand During the Lockdown

The story below is from a dude writing for Esquire, who recounts his Friday morning–which involved waking up at a girl's house, and learning about the city being on lockdown:

I woke up this morning with the standard one-night-stand accoutrements (booze sweats, eyes and brain feeling like they’ve just come out of the microwave, an embarrassing case of gastrointestinal unrest). I put my bare feet down on the floor while trying to find my cell phone and my dignity (both proved elusive), and in doing so I stepped on a giant shard of a broken wine glass. It apparently fell to its end and shattered into a galaxy of twinkling shrapnel from atop the nightstand, which itself had nearly been toppled somehow. Then I hopped over to the TV and turned on CNN.

And it was then when I realized I had a problem. The whole city was locked down. Taxis were suspended. Public transit shuttered. Cops were going house to house. Armored vehicles were roaming the streets. No one could go out. You weren’t even supposed to open the door unless it was for a cop.

With a deadline to hit and a cell phone running on 8% battery, it quickly became clear that my plan to quietly slip out and return home to fulfill my work obligations would be a near impossible feat. I was trapped. And what was meant to be a discreet exit was now an agonizingly gratuitous small-scale walk of shame across the apartment from the bedroom to the bathroom. I paused in the living room to offer up an uncomfortable morning salutation to the roommate, who sat on the couch wearing a robe and a distinct “who the hell is this guy?” look on her face. Yup.

At that point, I really had no option but to just pull up my socks (literally and figuratively) and deal with the moment. One of the great joys (or at least essential requirements) of the boozy one-night-stand is the ability to throw on whatever clothes of yours found strewn across an alien bedroom, and saunter out the door on your own volition. Without it, you face the very real and comically awkward situation of hanging around, reeking of stout and sex, until the city resumes its regularly scheduled programming.